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NEW YORK — Outside the Liberty Street firehouse opposite Ground Zero, tourists pause to look at a poster showing the 343 New York firefighters who died on 9/11.

Most snap a few pictures and move on. But Jacqueline Francoise, of Amsterdam, carefully examines each of their faces.

"I try to understand what the men felt before they entered the buildings," she says. "I want to see it, feel it — the fear of it."

Some tourists visit this part of Lower Manhattan just to say they were there. But others feel a need to gain a deeper understanding of the hell New Yorkers encountered that day.

At a handful of sites around Ground Zero that tell the stories of first responders, victims and victims' families, it is not uncommon for tourists toting cameras and glossy shopping bags to emerge clutching tissues and wiping away tears.

Such is the case at the Tribute WTC Visitor Center located in the shadow of one of the new World Trade Center towers under construction. Inside, visitors walk gingerly past a wall covered with posters of people reported missing by family members in the attack's immediate aftermath.

Some posters are to the point, describing a missing person's height, weight, birthmarks and tattoos.

Other posters offer fuller portraits of the missing and convey their families' desperation.

A poster for Deanna Galante, who worked on the 106th floor, says she had married six weeks earlier and was seven months pregnant. She called her family at 9 a.m. "hysterical," saying that smoke and flames were all around her. "We beg you to please air her photo," her family wrote.

Another display allows visitors to listen to radio dispatches from some of the first responders that morning. At 9:24 a.m., a firefighter from Ladder 15 reported that he had just spoken to the director of Morgan Stanley.

"78 seems to have taken the brunt of this stuff. There's a lot of bodies."

At 9:57 a.m., another firefighter reported that he was "stuck in the elevator."

"You're going to have to get a different elevator. We're chopping through the wall to get out."

Seeing and listening to these artifacts makes the events of that day "tangible," says Michael Bang, who is visiting from Atlanta, Georgia.

"It hits home. It brought a tear to my eye."

In another section of the visitor centre, three walls bear photographs and other mementoes of 9/11's victims. The collection includes the official death certificate for Scott Michael Johnson, of Glen Ridge, New Jersey.

It says he was 26 and that he worked as a research analyst in investment banking. Under cause of death, it reads: "physical injuries (body not found)."

Under manner of death, it says: "homicide."

The display also features a boy's message written to his father on a heart-shaped piece of paper: "To Daddy, I hope you are having a great time in heaven. I love you. Love, Kevin."

While some parents might choose to shield young children from such an exhibit because it is just too heavy, others, like Kalli Johnson of Rapid City, South Dakota, say it's important for kids to understand what happened.

Her 10-year-old twins, who were born on 9/11, often ask her about the day.

One of them once asked how the terrorists got out of the planes before slamming into the World Trade Center.

She says she explained that they sacrificed their lives for a greater cause.

Her child followed up: Does that mean they go to heaven?

She says she didn't know how to answer that one.

In the basement of the visitor centre, docent Anne Van Hine, who lost her firefighter-husband on 9/11, says "there are some things 10-year-olds don't need to know," but that doesn't mean she shies away from answering children's questions about why terrorists did what they did.

She says she'll explain that the terrorists believe that America's democracy and wealth are "bad." To help them understand, she might use an analogy of a schoolyard bully who makes a false assumption about another kid.

The 9/11-related exhibits around Ground Zero do not focus exclusively on loss and suffering.

At St. Paul's Chapel — known as "the little chapel that stood" because it sustained no damage despite being across the street from the Twin Towers — visitors learn about how the church became the site of a round-the-clock relief ministry for thousands of Ground Zero workers.

The battalion of volunteers included chiropractors and massage therapists, who worked 12-hour shifts to tend to the workers. Cots were brought in so those workers wouldn't have to sleep on the wooden pews.

"This place is so special," says Kate Killingsley-Smith, a visitor from Derbyshire, England. "It's a place of succour. It was a beacon, really."

Fellow traveller Sofia Holmsten, from Sweden, is similarly touched. As she leaves the church, she accepts an invitation to write a message on a white ribbon and tie it to the church's wrought-iron fence.

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